The World in 1934 the year the plains blew east

The dust storm that crossed the country in May carried an estimated 350 million tons of soil off the Great Plains. About 12 million pounds of it landed on Chicago alone, roughly four pounds of dirt for every person in the city.

Life back then

Money was short and about one worker in five had no job, so a nickel got thought about before it was spent. Kids saved pennies for candy and for Saturday matinees, where a six year old named Shirley Temple sang and tap danced through picture after picture. Grown-ups followed the manhunts for bank robbers in the newspaper the way people follow a serial. In August the toughest prisoners were shipped to a new island prison called Alcatraz. At night the family pulled chairs around the one radio set in the house and listened to the same program together.

The year in 8 events

• 🕯️Jan 15 An earthquake shakes Bihar and Nepal, killing more than 10,000 people and flattening whole towns.
• 🌪️May 11 Dust blown from the Great Plains darkens the sky over New York and Washington.
• 🚔May 23 Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are shot dead by lawmen on a road in Louisiana.
• ⚽Jun 10 Italy beats Czechoslovakia 2 to 1 in Rome and wins the World Cup.
• ⚔️Jun 30 Hitler has rivals inside his own party arrested and killed. Five weeks later President Hindenburg dies and Hitler takes the top job in Germany too.
• 🎬Jul 1 Hollywood begins enforcing its own morals code. A film now needs a seal of approval before cinemas will show it.
• 🥾Oct 16 Chinese Communist forces slip away from an army surrounding them and begin the Long March.
• 🕯️Dec 1 A gunman kills Sergei Kirov in Leningrad. Stalin uses the murder to begin years of arrests and executions.

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